I am reading the incredible stories of bravery, love, and challenges that so many people are talking about in the comments of my blog post about my choice to be a teen mother. I am sitting here with this warm feeling, sometimes a little teary, and feeling like I want to do more.

Story after story of not just women, but men and women together sharing their thoughts and their stories of THEIR journey into parenthood fill the page. I never expected that.

I am a writer, a storyteller, a chronicler of not just the world that I see around me and my travel adventures, but also about the life that brought me to this place. My journey has been filled with many adventures that were both good and sometimes very bad. But they are mine, and I own those moments and appreciate that each of those moments have added to the story of my life.

Recently I was telling a new doctor the story of my Lyme disease journey, telling her about my misdiagnosis, a little about my life in relation to my medical issues. At the end she smiled and she said “You have GOT to write a book!”

I've heard that before.

The truth is, I have thought about writing a book. In fact, I've written it… but I just don't feel like that was the best platform for sharing the stories I need to tell. So, I started a blog and I write articles for SheKnows and BlogHer as well as other platforms.

But as I sit here reading through the stories that YOU, the readers are sharing about your lives, the choices you made about adoption, pregnancy, abortions, and more, I know that readers are tired of boring stories, celebrity gossip, and they are ready to hear real life as we see it.

I think a few people were concerned that maybe my views leaned towards condemning abortion or adoption, while in fact that is not really where my head was in writing the post.

You see, when you are writing a very emotional and personal post like this one, you put yourself in a different place. For me, that place for me to write that story was remembering where I was, WHO I was, and the struggle I felt about what I should do. I wrote a lot of that piece in tears, thinking about some of the things that I really struggled with. Life at that time wasn't simple. I was a honor student, not a party girl. And even if I was, there shouldn't be judgment about a woman's choice.

I love reading how some of you made it work with the fathers of your child, I love how some of you men stood up for your child and became real men and loving fathers. YOU have a great story to tell, and I hope that your children are listening to those stories.

My youngest, my daughter is almost 16 and I think all the time about who she is, what choices she will make. She and I talk all the time about pregnancy, about choices, about knowing that even when she is scared of how we will react that she always knows that her parents will always be there for her. Reading the stories of how so many of you have, like myself, raised wonderful and loving children, I know that no matter what anyone else in the world thinks we put ourselves last and our children first. We taught them lessons that we learned from our own tears.

Thank all of you for sharing your stories. I would love to read more! I am so proud of all of you who have spoken up about your painful moments and you are taking a stand against bullying.

No, not everyone will agree with my personal choice to keep my baby. Not everyone will believe that I fully believe in adoption, in spite of the fact that I adopted two myself. And like someone else said, I am not a fan of abortion, but that's just my personal view based on the choices I made in my life. But I feel like everyone has to come to their own happily ever after based on what they can live with.

So once again, Thank you all for sharing your stories. Your comments have inspired me.

What a beautiful, heartfelt post. You definitely made the right decision. I just posted a little piece about obstacles and crossroads and feel silly after reading this. You’ve been there. You decided to take the challenge so many would see as an obstacle as a chance and just go for it. What I love is that you seem to look back now knowing it was the right thing to do. And you can be proud of you and I bet you will always be proud of your daughter!

Thank you! Through the years we have become parents to 5 incredible lives. Each of them has a different story of how they came to be my child. All of their stories, their lives, were exactly the right decision, no matter the struggle. But as you said, we all have obstacles and those pebbles in the path are what makes us who we are.

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